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The creative industries Nintendo are facing Nintendo a crisis by using a tool that was supposed to save them. The widespread use of the WGSN trends system by designers in fashion and beyond is being accused as a key factor for the death of creativity especially for designers who with 5 to 10 years Nintendo experience who have always worked with the system. Recruiters are looking for older generation or recent graduates to avoid designers that have spent their careers using the trends system. At H&M, we're told that designers are expected to study everyday the trends information that the WGSN database contains. In fact, the system monitors to check if the designers are looking at WGSN for two hours a day.

WGSN doesn't just encourage mediocrity, it's about to bite the hand that fed it: The creative industries in the US and Europe are in for a final shock. There's an over-simplistic theory held in many creative industries that the best designers come from the West and the best, or at least cheapest, production happens in the East. True or not, that's how the business works today. What happens when the East doesn't need the West? WGSN are about to give the fashion and creative industries a serious blow - WGSN plans to translate the whole site into Mandarin and provide the patterns of the catwalks on their site. Factory owners in the East don't need to wait for European and US brands to put orders in anymore, they can just sign in to the system, see what's on the catwalk, download the pattern and go straight to production. What will happen then, when continents of designers have no training in developing new ideas to fight that onslaught?

The creative industries are facing a crisis by using a tool that was supposed to save them. The widespread use of the WGSN trends system by designers in fashion and beyond is being accused as a key factor for the death of creativity especially for designers who with 5 to 10 years experience who have always worked with the system. Recruiters are looking for older generation or recent graduates to avoid designers that have spent their careers using the trends system. At H&M, we're told that designers are expected to study everyday the trends information that the WGSN database contains. In fact, the system monitors to check if the designers are looking at WGSN for two hours a day.

A key problem with WGSN is its near monopolistic success. WGSN has tens of thousands of users and aim to have 1000 accounts soon. It's reached a situation where it's become the default and management feel that you can't run a fashion company without subscribing to WGSN. At $20,000 for 5 desktop licenses WGSN the grumbling in the ranks suggests that there is only one winner.

Every designer in fashion and beyond (companies like Mercedes also subscribe to the service) is looking at the same data for inspiration for new work. What's worse is that smaller brands who may not have the budget to subscribe have the habit of walking into stores and copying the designs that larger brands have taken straight from the catwalk files of WGSN. Everyone's in the 'safe' game of WGSN whether they subscribe or not. Another major problem is the quality of the data, critics say. 75% seems to be aggregated from Google and blog searches and only as little 25% is original. Of that 25%, half could be described as good quality and the other half seems written by recent graduates straight out of college with no creative or journalistic direction given.

And of the 'good data' critics say that often it's just as easy to find better and free content on the web. WGSN's city section is a poor man's version of Super Future and you can get as many photos of the catwalks on Style.com as you can on WGSN (granted you can't get the high quality - but after you've seen the idea and stolen it, how high a quality do you need an image to be?).

There's also a concern for its reach and depth when it comes to research. WGSN stands for Worth Global Style Network but from what we understand their structure seems to be far from global. The power of the brand convinces its clients that it has an international research team but we're told that the US has only 5 full time staff and there are only 2 staff in Hong Kong. Ha ppy Bir th day, HIROHYTOAll of this provides poor trends data that everyone uses to create next year's styles, fashion and design. It destroys creativity. The problem is that WGSN holds such power on the industry that it's now considered by many brands that it's unwise not to subscribe to it. When the sports brand Umbro cancelled their subscription recently to try to bring fresh and original creativity back to the design team, we're told that the reaction from WGSN was 'How dare you?'

WGSN doesn't just encourage mediocrity, it's about to bite the hand that fed it: The creative industries in the US and Europe are in for a final shock. There's an over-simplistic theory held in many creative industries that the best designers come from the West and the best, or at least cheapest, production happens in the East. True or not, that's how the business works today. What happens when the East doesn't need the West? WGSN are about to give the fashion and creative industries a serious blow - WGSN plans to translate the whole site into Mandarin and provide the patterns of the catwalks on their site. Factory owners in the East don't need to wait for European and US brands to put orders in anymore, they can just sign in to the system, see what's on the catwalk, download the pattern and go straight to production. What will happen then, when continents of designers have no training in developing new ideas to fight that onslaught?